i62 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



[o them to destruction. A flock of about fifty is con- 

 sidered big enough. And these conclusions are 

 supported, it is thought, by what happened to 

 Gaberius, a Roman eques. He owned i,ooo iiigera ^ 

 (700 acres) on the outskirts of Rome, and hearing 

 from a certain goat-herd, who had brought to the 

 city ten she-goats, that each of them brought 

 him in a denarius a day, he bought a thou- 

 sand she-goats, expecting to get from his estate a 

 thousand denarii (;£"32) a day. So far was he out 

 in his reckoning, that in a short time he lost them 

 all through disease. However, in the country of 

 the Sallentini and about Casinum they graze flocks 

 containing as many as a hundred ^ she-goats. 



As to the proportion of males to females, there 

 is much the same difference of opinion, some, like 

 myself, providing one he-goat to ten females, others, 

 like Menas,^ one to fifteen; others again, such as 

 Murrius, one to twenty. 



^ Mille iugerum. Varro, il, i, 26, has mille naves. In every 

 other place where the word occurs In the singular in this work, 

 it Is a neuter noun. Aulus Gellius (i, 16) gives many examples 

 of Its use as a declinable neuter noun, quoting from Cicero 

 (Mil. 53), Mille hominum versabatur, and Lucilius (Bk. xv), 

 Hunc mini possum quivicerit atque duobtis \\ Campanus sonipes, 

 etc., and again from Lucilius (Bk. viil), Tu milli numtnum 

 poles uno quaerere centum. 



2 Ad centenas. Columella (vli, 6, 5) makes this number the 

 superior limit, though, he says, there is no objection to your 

 penning 1,000 sheep together. Sed numerum huius generis 

 maiorem quam centum capitum sub uno clauso non expedit 

 habere^ cum lanigerae mille pariter commode stabulentur. 



' M^nas is possibly the freedman of whom Suetonius 



